The Dogpile, From Across the Fence

On Tuesday night, Johan Rojas knocked a single up the middle off Pirates closer David Bednar. Cristian Pache, who’d just entered the game as a pinch runner to start the 10th inning, came around to score easily. When he crossed home plate, the Phillies were guaranteed a playoff spot for the second straight year, and by night’s end they were locked in as hosts of one of the NL Wild Card series.

Typical scenes ensued. In college baseball, where budgets are smaller and buying alcohol for the freshmen and sophomores can get a little dicey from a legal standpoint, this kind of celebration takes the form of a dogpile. In fact, “dogpile” has become the accepted shorthand for a victory that either secures or advances a team toward a championship. You’ll hear “two dogpiles to Omaha,” and the like.

Big leaguers don’t dogpile, or rather, they don’t only dogpile. And the Phillies, having developed a reputation over the past 18 months as baseball’s lascivious chaos agents, know the post-dogpile rigmarole by heart. Champagne and beer were sprayed around the clubhouse, cigars handed out, and Garrett Stubbs procured a set of overalls.

Some people think dogpiles ought to be reserved for winning a championship, as if celebrating the waypoint will take focus away from the end destination. I take the opposite view: Life is short, baseball careers even more so. Dogpile as frequently as possible, under any pretext you can find. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been there before — act like you might never get there again.

As much as I love a dogpile, the image I’ll remember from Tuesday night won’t be Stubbs’ overalls or the Phillies’ pushcart full of beer. It’ll be this photo, captured by Justice delos Santos of MLB.com:

Bailey Falter, a former Phillie, is the lone Pirate left in the dugout watching the celebration pic.twitter.com/UnC2NYIgO7

— Justice delos Santos (@justdelossantos) September 27, 2023

That’s Pirates left-hander Bailey Falter, who two months ago was Phillies left-hander Bailey Falter, watching his former teammates celebrate from behind the dugout railing.

A year ago, Falter was on the other side of the fence, dogpiling with the Phillies. His contributions to last year’s pennant-winning team weren’t on the level of a Zack Wheeler or Bryce Harper, but he made 16 starts and threw 84 effective innings, and started Game 4 of the NLCS. (Admittedly, that start went very badly, and Falter was let off the hook when it went even worse for Mike Clevinger.)

Falter came into spring training as a potential swingman or no. 5 starter for the Phillies, and was forced into the rotation when Ranger Suárez started the season on the IL and Andrew Painter’s surprise bid for an Opening Day roster spot was derailed by Tommy John surgery.

And with a golden opportunity to hold down a rotation spot in front of him, Falter just couldn’t keep hitters off his fastball. Opponents hit .213 with a .264 wOBA off Falter’s four-seamer in 2022; in 2023, those numbers went up to .307 and .342. The Phillies demoted him to the minors in mid-May, and at the deadline sent him to Pittsburgh for Rodolfo Castro, who’s barely played.

As a result, Falter got to experience something that is by no means unique, but is definitely unusual. After making the World Series with a team last season, he got to watch his former teammates dogpile this year. In the previous 20 seasons, that had happened just 12 other times:

In addition to this list, there are a few borderline cases. When I claimed this topic in Slack, Kyle Kishimoto mentioned that Tony Kemp has a habit of going out to watch walk-off celebrations and the like. Kemp was on the 2020 A’s when his former team, the Astros, beat them in the ALDS. Kemp doesn’t quite make this list, because he was traded to the Cubs before the Astros made the World Series the previous year, but he’d been with Houston for parts of four seasons, including 2017. Surely he felt then whatever Falter felt this week.

Brandon McCarthy was on the 2017 Dodgers and 2018 Braves, but suffered a season-ending injury in June, well before the two teams met in the playoffs. Tyler Walker pitched for the 2009 Phillies, though not in the postseason, and as a member of the 2010 Nationals witnessed Philadelphia’s division-clinching win, but not the playoff berth-clinching win.

It’s also of interest that Falter is one of three players, along with Chris Coste and Mark Bellhorn, to watch his former pennant-winning teammates dogpile after having started the season with that team.

As a non-athlete, it’s hard to imagine the precise mix of emotions a ballplayer has watching his ex-teammates celebrate. Falter played with several of the current Phillies as far back as Double-A; surely he’s happy for his friends. Mix that in with FOMO, or perhaps even jealousy. Consider also that Falter had a shot and couldn’t hold onto his spot in the rotation this year; had he simply gotten more batters out early in this season, the Phillies might never have elevated Cristopher Sánchez or traded for Michael Lorenzen. It’s a lot to take in.

Maybe this makes me a miserable old voyeur, but I love images like this. We know what the Phillies are feeling in that moment, because we see it dozens of times every year. By zooming out a bit, we see something a little more complex.

One of my favorite sports photos of all time is this shot of Kyle Schwarber during the 2014 NCAA Tournament. (I’m sure some of you have read my spiel about this photo before on some forum; take the fact that I won’t shut the hell up about it as proof of how much I love it.)

In 2014, Indiana was a powerhouse, coming off a run to the College World Series the year before that inaugurated a renaissance for Big Ten baseball. They were even better in 2014, led by Schwarber, and entered the NCAA Tournament as the no. 4 team in the country. The Hoosiers were one of the favorites to win it all, and if they could, they’d be the first Midwestern team to win the College World Series in 25 years, and the first Big Ten team to win it all in almost 50. But with the core of the team bound for the draft — including Schwarber — it was now or never.

I vividly remember watching the later stages of Indiana’s winner-take-all regional game against Stanford, and it never occurred to me for a second that Indiana would lose, until Tommy Edman took Scott Effross deep to turn a 4-3 Indiana lead into a 5-4 walk-off Stanford win.

As Stanford dogpiled in the background, Associated Press photographer AJ Mast framed up the shot and pulled his focus in to center Schwarber, crouched with his head in his hands.

Dogpiles conjure familiar emotions. Joy, obviously. Relief, if you’re a partisan prone to nervousness and pessimism, as most baseball fans are. Perhaps even shock or astonishment, depending on the events that preceded it.

It’s jarring to see the other side of the story in the background, whether that’s a losing player’s obvious heartbreak or the ambivalence of someone watching his former teammates live his dream. (The latter scenario being particularly ironic for Falter now or Stubbs a year ago, given the chorus of the Phillies’ victory song.)

Most of society isn’t zero-sum, but baseball is, and a sudden reminder of that reality in the middle of a celebration is like an unexpected splash of acid. Of empathy, really. We might not know what it’s like to watch former teammates celebrate clinching a playoff berth. But desiring something you once had, and have since lost? That’s universal.